About Schmidt
(2002)
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In Alexander Payne's ABOUT SCHMIDT, Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) is retiring from a long, dedicated tenure at Woodmen of the World Insurance Company. Though he is proud of this achievement, he finds some difficulty adjusting to life without work; and to make matters worse, his loving wife Helen (June Squibb) passes away, leaving him all alone. Schmidt turns to his daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) for support, but she is busy planning her marriage to Randall (Dermot Mulroney), who Warren just can't stand. He decides to sponsor a Tanzanian child, Ndugu, through a program advertised on television, and sends elaborate letters to the 6-year-old boy along with his $22 monthly checks. Meanwhile, he sets off on a soul-searching voyage across the west in his new RV. |
We've seen Jack Nicholson build a career on playing lunatics, misfits and colourful characters, but rarely has he had the opportunity to portray someone as unexceptional as Warren Schmidt — and he does an exceptionally good job. In this endearing tragi-comedy from director Alexander Payne, Nicholson plays a man who feels disconnected from his own life, a mood brought on by forced retirement, the sudden death of his wife and his daughter's impending marriage to a man he regards as a loser. His road trip to her wedding is the start of a very offbeat journey for the lonely, alienated Schmidt, as a subdued, almost glum Nicholson gets to grips with new beginnings. It's funnier than it sounds as the film's quirky approach to this late-life crisis is typified by Schmidt's hilarious outpouring of pent-up bitterness in his letters to a Tanzanian orphan that he has sponsored. While this is not a movie of great dramatic or comic peaks, the star's restrained, poignant performance nevertheless extracts meaning from the smallest moments.
Halliwell's Film Guide
At once affecting and funny, slyly observant and celebratory, this dark, comic look at old age gains immeasurably from Nicholson's contained performance; he restrains his usual mannerisms to suggest the confusions and decencies of a man who has lost his